"Morrison, William - The Sly Bungerhop v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

THE SLY BUNGERHOP
William Morrison

Colmer was five feet four inches tall and as ferocious as a baby bunny, but he had a powerful voice for the size of him. He was using it now.
"You bloated battener on better men's brains!" he thundered alliteratively. "What makes you think you know more than I do about the future?"
L. Richard de Wike fiddled nervously with the button that would summon his secretary, but refrained from pushing it. He sighed and allowed the storm of vivid invective to burst around his ears. It was a part of his job.
There are publishing-house editors who are employed because of a great sensitivity to syntax and style; de Wike had a tin ear. There are editors who hold their jobs because of their ability to make friends and attract authors; de Wike got on badly with his own mother, and all subsequent relationships were worse.
As an editor, de Wike had only one real talent and that was an ability to absorb punishment. It was enough. Let an author come in and blow his stackЧno advertising! a miserable job of production! a deliberate, calculated insult from Miss Hargreave on the switchboard, who pretended not to recognize his name!Чand it was de Wike who had the task of riding out the storm.
His title was Executive Editor, but it might just as well have been Whipping Boy. After half an hour's exercise on de Wike, even the most outraged of authors found his passions spent and was then easy meat for whatever the other editors in the firm wished to do with him.
This particular storm, though, showed no signs of spending itself.
At a momentary lull, de Wike cleared his throat and said: "Now, really, Colmer. It's only that the editorial board feels your picture of thirty-first-century life lacks a certain warmth. Surely you can understandЧ"
"Warmth!" howled Colmer, freshly enraged. "Good God, de Wike, this is my book and my future. I don't tell you how to cheat an author out of his reprint royaltiesЧdon't you tell me what the thirty-first century's going to be like! Remember Tales of Millennium! Remember what Life said in its editorial about T Is for Tomorrow! RememberЧ"
De Wike closed his ears and concentrated on remembering. True, Colmer was the best science fiction writer they had. He was also the most temperamental. He didn't look the part in either caseЧa mousy little man with thick glasses over his watery eyes; he was blind as a bat without them. His heroes conquered galaxies and alien maidens with equal ease and daring; Colmer himself had never ventured west of the Hudson River nor north of his apartment on the Grand Concourse. But the critics loved him and the cash customers ate his books up. So--
Crash!
L. Richard de Wike pulled out the mental plugs in his ears and paid attention. Colmer had been making a point about the hereditary cretinism in the ancestry of all publishers' men and had pulled off his glasses to gesticulate with them. He had gestured wildly and collided with the Luna Cup that rested proudly atop de Wike's desk. The crash was the sound of the Luna Cup flying across the room and smashing into silverplated scrap against the base of the marble bust of L. Richard de Wike as a boy.
"Now, really, Colmer!" De Wike was horrified. It wasn't just the cost of the cupЧthat had been only thirty or forty dollars. It was the principle. That cup was awarded for the best line of science fiction books; it had been the property of de Wike's firm for six years running and it had cost a pretty penny, indeed, to set up an organization willing to award it to them, to pay the expenses of the award dinners, to keep the judges complacently in line, year after year.
Colmer stared blindly at de Wike. He said in a furious roar, "My only pair of glasses, ruined. And you worry about your lousy cup! Oh, you'll pay for this, de Wike!"
And he blundered blindly out of the office, crashing against a chair, a file cabinet and the half-open door.
Colmer turned in the general direction of the elevator, afraid of bumping into someone. Hamlet could tell a hawk from a handsaw, but Colmer couldn'tЧnot without his glasses, not from as much as a dozen feet away. Even a human figure merged into mists at six feet or so; he could tell that it was a figure, but identity, age and sex were beyond his recognition. Not that he much cared. The memory of his insults and ill treatment was too strong in his mind.
"My only glasses!" he muttered searingly. "The thirty-first century!"
A figure that might have been either a pink-faced baboon or a fat man in a brown suit appeared out of the mists and murmured pleasantly: "This way, sir."
"Thanks," growled Colmer, and fumbled his way to the elevator.
Usually that was easy enough, even without his glasses; de Wike's office was on the top floor, and ordinarily there would be one elevator waiting there, door open, until the starter on the ground floor buzzed it to start its descent. Not this time, though. All the doors were closed.
Colmer found the handiest door, stuck his face almost into it to make sure it wasn't another office, and located a signal button. Bending down almost to touch it with his nose to sec that it wasn't a fire alarm or Western Union signal, he put his forefinger on it and pressed. It was an elevator button, all right. It said, "Up."
He waited for a second, and then the door opened and he stepped in.
Then something registered with him for the first time. De Wike's office was on the top floor.
But the button had said "Up."
He stared witheringly at the operator, a vague blue blur of uniform with a vague blonde blur of hair on top. Practical jokes?
The operator said in a pleasant soprano voice, "Wettigo mizzer?"
Colmer demanded suspiciously, "What are you talking about?"
"Ah," said the pleasant soprano, and then there was a sort of flat, fleshy click, as though she had popped her bubble-gum. "Where to, sir?" she asked.
"Where to!" he mimicked. "Where the devil can I go to? Down, of course! I want to get out of this confounded place beforeЧ"
"Sorry, sir. This car only goes up. Where would you like to stop?"
"Now stop that!" he commanded. Up! There simply was no up, not from de Wike's officeЧnot in this building. "I want to go down. I want to go clown now. And no nonsense about it."
"Sorry, sir. This car only goes up. Where would you like to stop?"
He stared at her, but her face was no more than a pink blur under the blonde halo. He would have liked to get a better look at herЧhe was nearly sure all the elevator operators he'd ever seen in this building were menЧbut, after all, you can't put your face right up against that of a strange blonde with no better excuse than that you've broken your glasses. Or can you?
The pleasant soprano said again, "Where would you like to stop, sir?"
Like a damned parrot, he thought scathingly, or like a machine. But what could you expect in a building tenanted by creatures like de Wike?
He chose a number at random. "A hundred and tenth," he snapped. "And let's get started!" That would hold her.
"Sorry, sir. We're already started, but this car only goes up to ninety-nine."
"Ah," he said disgustedly, "ninety-nine will do."
What was the use of going along with this nonsense? And the car certainly wasn't moving; he was sure of that! He'd ridden in enough elevators to know. Why, his famous free-fall sequence in The Martian Chanukah was based on an express elevator ride from the top of the R.C.A. Building. If this were going up, he would feel heavier; if it were going down, he'd feel lighter. And all he felt wasЧwhy, he thought wonderingly, queasy. Maybe it was moving, some way or another; certainly he seemed to be having a little trouble keeping his balance.
Colmer leaned against the back of the car and glowered blindly into space. Above the closed door there were winking pink-and-green lightsЧlike an indicator, he thought. Well, all right, they were moving. Good. Since the only way to move was down, they would soon be at the ground floor, and he would be out of the building, and then it was only a short cab-ride to the offices of Forestry, Brasbit and Hake, who could be relied on to publish his books the way he wrote them, and who had said as much just the other day ...
Still, he thought, softening, de Wike wasn't such a bad sort. As editors went, that is. And old man Brasbit was known to have some idiosyncrasies of his ownЧfor example, there was the time he had hauled five of his own authors into court for violating the option clauses of their contractsЧand, on the whole, de Wike's firm could be counted on to be reasonable about things like that. If a better offer turned up for a particular book, they wouldn't usually stand in an author's way.
And this present difficultyЧwell, who was to know whose impression of what the thirty-first century would be like was correct? Colmer thought of it as harsh and mechanized; de Wike's editorial board thought there would be more human softness. Well, why wasn't that possible, too? Suppose in chapter nineteen, for instance, he had the Eugenics Committee set aside the ruling that ninth cousins couldn't intermarry and--
"Here you are, sir. Ninety-nine."
"Oh." Colmer blinked. The door was open and the queasy-making motion had stopped. "Thanks," he said, and then, moved by a sudden impulse and the hell with what she might think of it, he put his face close to hers.
She didn't slap him.
She didn't draw back.
She just stood there, waiting.